Set Goals for Your Channel

Learning Objectives

Understand the value of aligning channel goals with overall business goals.

Explore the types of metrics to apply to your portal strategy.

Develop an internal reporting plan for your partner portal.

Set Goals for Your Channel

It’s critical to have a well-thought-out set of goals and a plan to track progress against those goals. And it’s important not to simply focus on sales revenue alone. You should also consider goals around return on investment (ROI) of your channel strategy,
cost of sales, and other strategic elements, such as market share or new product introduction. And of course, all of these goals should align with the larger sales and growth goals of the company.

Think about your channel goals and how might they impact the broader business goals. It’s a worthwhile exercise to consider how your channel program can support these broader goals and to align them as much as possible. Start by looking at your overall
business objectives. Which of these can be supported by channel sales? Are there any goals that are directly tied to channel success? Examples include:

Market Expansion. Many companies can successfully work with established partners to help them penetrate a new market.

New Product Launch. Some companies choose to sell new products exclusively through the channel.

Sales Growth. One of the best ways to achieve new sales growth is through a well-planned and well-executed channel sales strategy.

Strategic Advantage. Along with sales growth, a successful channel strategy can become a competitive advantage.

Set Goals for Your Partners

Just as you shouldn't focus on revenue goals alone for your organization, you should also apply the same criteria to partner goals: what besides revenue is important? Goals are also dependent on where your partners/prospective partners are on their engagement
journey. The Channel Company says, “How you manage and set goals for your partners depends on who they are, as well as where they are in their journey.”

Consider if and by how much you need to adjust your sales yield expectations. How could margins change when you sell through the channel? Is the product mix different? Are add-ons less prevalent?

Make an objective estimate of your company’s overall sales maturity. How predictable is your sales process? Do you offer a complete solution? These factors can influence partner success.

And finally, we recommend setting goals that are consistent with your corporate values. It’s important for partners to understand your values and how they influence every part of your business.

Establish Key Metrics

There isn’t a universal set of metrics that you can apply to every stage of the partner lifecycle, which means companies need to think about which metrics are appropriate per stage of the life cycle. As described by Gary Morris in a post on his blog Successful
Channels:

“Each step of a partner’s life-stage journey comes with a corresponding set of

recommended tracking and performance metrics. These metrics help define

the partners that are the best fit with your brand while also serve to track the

activities that are necessary to develop capable, motivated, and revenue-producing partners.”

Another important lens to view metrics is by direct and indirect measures, also referred to as leading and lagging metrics. Leading metrics are those which show activity and engagement, all pointing to eventual revenue.

Behavior

Leading Metric

Participation in trials, proof-of-concepts (POCs)

# trials/POCs

Participation in webinars, enablement, training sessions

# events attended

Deal Registrations

# deals registered; partner-contributed pipeline

Overall activity in portal

# logins, engagement

Joint Business Planning

# plans developed with partners

Attendance at in-person events

# events attended

Lagging metrics are associated with sales outcomes and must include more than the simple revenue metric.

Description

Lagging Metric

Deal Win Rate

# total deals won; Total # Opportunities; Win/Loss rate

Revenue

$ total revenue; $ revenue by segment; YoY growth rate

# New Customers

# new logos

Product Type Sold

Revenue by Product Category, or SKU

Attrition

rate, expressed as %

Develop an Internal Reporting Plan

It is important to have a plan for how you will communicate these metrics (think storytelling for grownups!) in order to provide as much context as possible to the information. Here’s what we recommend.

Develop a plan to deliver regular reports to key internal stakeholders. Don’t overdo it with data. Share anecdotal information (stories and even excerpts of content from the portal), as well.

Organize metrics in a manner that makes it easy to understand (align to KPIs/business goals).

And don’t be shy! Reach out to your partners, survey them, ask for feedback. They are your co-creators in this journey. Next up, we’ll dive into best practices for recruiting and onboarding your channel partners.